Cowboys maximize final day of draft with trades to add picks, fill needs at RB, CB, DE
They traded their lone second-round pick during the draft and ended up with 12 picks. Only six made the roster that first year. By 2013 none were left.
Asked what he learned from 2009 as he headed into the 2019 NFL Draft, the first for the Cowboys since then without a No. 1 pick, owner Jerry Jones said tongue-in-cheek, “when you don’t have a first-round pick, you learn that you could not have a good draft.”
Vice president Stephen Jones, however, jumped in and said they learned not to be cute and try manufacture things that weren’t there.
“I think sometimes you come up and you feel like you are short on picks,” Stephen Jones said. “Probably one thing that we did learn from that draft is not to keep moving it further back to pick up picks. Just take good players. Don’t worry about trying to parlay a pick into three more picks, or four more picks later on in the draft. At the end of the day, the best picks are in the front of the draft. That’s what you need to do.”
And that’s precisely what the Cowboys did during the three-day draft that ended on Sunday.
After not having a pick on Thursday, thanks to a 2018 mid-season trade with Oakland Raiders for receiver Amari Cooper, they took Central Florida defensive tackle Trysten Hill and Penn State guard/center Connor McGovern in the second and third round on Friday.
They filled a huge need on Saturday by taking Memphis running back Tony Pollard with the first of their two fourth-round picks.
Then the Cowboys went to work to add more picks and value to the draft, resulting them turning a four-player final day into six, that included a bookend running back to Pollard with Ohio State’s Mike Weber in the seventh round, allowing them to play and manage starter Ezekiel Elliott now and in the future, per owner Jerry Jones.
Pollard was clearly the gem of the final day. He rushed for 552 yards and had 458 receiving yards last season with Memphis, showing his versatility as a runner and pass catcher. More importantly, he scores touchdowns.
Pollard had 25 touchdowns, including seven on kickoff returns, during his college career. He scored as a runner, receiver and a kick returner.
The Cowboys haven’t had a kickoff return for a touchdown since Felix Jones in 2008.
The Cowboys were looking to upgrade the running back position behind Elliott.
The Cowboys doubled up at running back with Weber in the seventh.
Pollard is more of a change of pace back who can be a gadget player that can be flexed out wide.
Weber is in the mold of the more traditional backup to Elliott. He has 4.47 speed and can also make plays in the passing game.
He had 455 carries into 2,676 yards (5.9 YPC) and 24 touchdowns while adding 54 receptions for 297 yards and a touchdown in three years at Ohio State.
As a result, the Cowboys believe there is room for all three on the roster, if they can overcome holdover Darius Jackson.
“From a standpoint of efficiency within a game as well as from managing our overall future, we need some good running back skill behind [Ezekiel Elliott],” Jerry Jones said. “That covers a lot of ground if you talk about what we’re doing with Zeke, but prudence tells you you need to manage this, and these guys let us manage Zeke in a manner of speaking. This Pollard gives us some juice from the running back position, and he gives us legitimate options that threaten defenses. The same thing is true with Weber. Weber, it just so happens that he is from Ohio State, but he can do some of the same things as Elliott. That was a goal coming into this draft; let’s wisely use Zeke now and in the future. Those two address that perfectly.”
“We made them while we were on the clock,” Stephen Jones said. “If you look at them, we didn’t make them before we were on the clock. We had some guys that came off the board right in front of us and things happen, and felt like what we were looking to get was worth risking. A lot of times when you make those trades at the end of the fifth, we have a handful of players that we would still be happy with if we lost two or three along the way. It made a lot of sense. You do those type of things and you end up picking up some good picks and it ends up well.”
He started in 26 games over the last two seasons, recording 85 tackles and four interceptions.
It is a position of need because cornerback Byron Jones is coming off hip surgery and won’t be ready until the start of the season. He is also in the final year of his contract as is cornerback Anthony Brown.
The Cowboys went back to Miami with the pick of defensive end Joe Jackson at 165. Jackson led the Hurricanes with 9 sacks in 2018.
Jackson is a physical presence who racked up 129 tackles, 35.5 tackles for a loss and 22.5 sacks in three seasons at Miami.
It continues a recent trend by the Cowboys of targeting safeties late in the draft rather than investing an early pick on one.
Wilson is unlikely to compete with George Iloka, Jeff Heath or Kavon Frazier for the starting job at strong safety opposite Xavier Woods as a rookie.
The Cowboys went back to defense with their final pick, end Jalen Jelks of Oregon. The two-time All-Pac 12 performer had 15 career sacks and 29.5 tackles for losses in four seasons with the Ducks.
He completed a Cowboys draft that leaned heavily toward the defense with a defensive tackle, two defensive ends, a safety and cornerback to along with two running backs and an offensive guard.
This story was originally published April 27, 2019 at 1:12 PM.
